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Let them play!

A man and woman with two large standard poodles said to me "Someone lost a shoe...how does someone lose a shoe?"

They pointed to a Nike sports shoe sitting on the boardwalk perplexed. I laughed and shook my head, thinking they were joking, but they weren't.

Down on the sand at this Virginia State Park beach were boyscouts "running with scissors", well actually they were sharp sticks. Yes sticks! What do boys do with sticks? Chase each other, of course. How did this one shoe end up there away from any other shoes? Boys with sticks.

It was my pleasure to see these kids outside on the sand, away from the typical immobility and "screen time" they have to entertain themselves at home and even at school these days. These were boys being boys, not trying to sound like a colloquial copout, but actually complimentary, and I thought it was fantastic!

I was reading "The Overprotected Kid" A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution. By Hanna Rosin MARCH 19, 2014

Thinking back to your own childhood

Were not the best of times as a kid when you were out late with your friends exploring, making forts, skipping stones, and having fun? Was it only fun because the parents weren't there or was it fun because you were using your imagination? I realize Cowboys and Indians is a thing of the past, but we can still build a fort in the trees and leap off the bank of a creek and make a big splash!

Hide and seek is a kid-favorite everywhere

Running, screaming, chasing, using your own ingenuity to invent the best place to hide to go undetected by the seeker.

Could we consider this for our kids and grandkids?

Let them play. Let them make their own fun. Allow them the opportunity to use their own imaginations and creativity? These are the impressionable stages of their lives that will impact them forever. Being told what to do and how to behave is one way to be exist, without ever truly living.

Virginia State Parks has "outside" perfected!

We have trails and grassy knolls, sandy beaches and waves, trees and forests, waterfalls and rocks, brush piles and fallen logs. Virginia State Parks are the perfect place to play!

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The Virginia Association for Parks is the premier non-profit organization for promoting local, state and national parks in Virginia. They have spent more than a dozen years building an effective state-wide grassroots organization.

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